


Building Blocks

by Collectible



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Snow Day, bratty 9 y/os become even brattier when it's keito and eichi, enstars secret valentine, happy valentine's!!!, risking sickness to build a snowman with your best friend isn't that true friendship???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-28 15:40:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17790134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Collectible/pseuds/Collectible
Summary: One of these days, Keito really needed to put his foot down and tell Eichi 'no.'Today was not that day.





	Building Blocks

Snowflakes cascaded down to the earth in a lazy flurry of white petals, as if God was too lazy to bring about a real snowstorm and simply threw handfuls of snow from the sky to appease his expecting children.  
  
Despite the weak fanfare as the snow met the ground, the weather was cold enough to allow it to stick. When Keito walked around, crunching tough and icy snow in his wake, he was near ankles-deep. His legs felt heavy when he moved forward. Moisture soaked through his pants, chilling his skin despite his heavy snow wear.  
  
All of a sudden, Keito was ready to head inside and forget the stupid idea Eichi thought up ten minutes ago.  
  
_"School's cancelled and your family isn't around, so let’s go outside!_ "  
  
Eichi was dumb. This was dumb.  
  
“Your face looks weird,” said dumb Eichi as he gazed up from the bright red bucket containing clumps of fresh snow. Keito had to concentrated to hear the muffled voice behind a gray scarf. He'd at least thought something through when he agreed to this mess, so Eichi wore heavy clothing to preserve heat.  A yellow hat hid his matching-colored hair. “Keito, stop making faces and help out. I want to get this done before your mother returns and tells us to go back inside.”  
  
The snow bit at his cheeks despite the scarf wrapped around his neck. A chill ran through Keito and he glared at his so-called friend. “I’m not making faces,” Keito retorted. “And we should go inside regardless. You’re going to get sick.”  
  
“I’ve been sick my whole life, so that doesn’t matter.” Eichi scooped some snow out of the bucket with a shovel and tossed it onto the 'base' of their snowman. So far, it resembled a malformed lump of nothing.  
  
Eichi didn’t know how to make snowmen. It was unlikely he’d ever done it, what with how often he was stuck in the hospital during the winter. Speaking of, wasn’t he allowing the Tenshouin heir to fall ill the longer they stayed outside? What made him agree to this in the first place?  
  
“Don’t stand around!” Face falling into a pout, Eichi unceremoniously tossed the snow shovel at him. Keito dodged it without a problem and it soared right past. A sharp reply on the tip of his tongue, Eichi cut him off before the first syllable escaped his lips. “You’re the only one I can make a snowman with. The servants keep me inside and I can’t do anything locked up in a hospital room all day. Can’t you help me this once?”  
  
Keito recalled why he’d agreed to this nonsense as the wiggling feeling of guilt wormed into his chest. Eichi was good at using his illness to his advantage--and try as he might, Keito had yet to stop letting it get to him. At his core, he was too much of a bleeding heart.  
  
“... Fine,” he groused. "Move. I'll do it." Keito gathered the thrown shovel and stomped to Eichi's mockery of a base.  
  
To their luck, the snow was malleable to the touch. Under the pressure of his gloves and his attentive gaze, the lower half of Eichi’s desired snowman came to life. Keito fixed it up into something capable of standing under the weight of a second ball of snow. As he worked, Eichi plopped himself down on a soft patch of snow underneath some trees. He scrutinized the process as if studying every one of Keito’s movements, every twitch of his fingers.  
  
Coming from a bossy child who refused to keep his mouth shut unless everything went his way, the absolute silence was welcome and unnatural.  
  
Keito ignored him until the snowman’s base was good enough to leave alone. His fingers were freezing inside of his gloves, eager to have him walk into his home and scour for hot chocolate. He cast a yearning look to his front door a scant few yards away. Eichi would whine if he did leave, though.  
  
At the reminder of his friend, the heavy set of eyes on his back grew creepier with each second.  
  
“You’re quiet,” Keito said, kneeling to clutch a handful of loose snow out of his bucket. He tossed it in Eichi’s general location. The weighty gaze vanished as Eichi scurried out of the wayward path of his lazy snowball. “Don’t be. You scheme when you’re quiet, and I don’t want to deal with that.”  
  
“I don’t scheme,” Eichi outright lied, “and I was studying the method you used to form the snow.”  
  
“It looked like you were being lazy.”  
  
“Well, I wasn’t.” He sniffed.  
  
Eichi’s face was flushed pink. Huffs of visible air slid through his scarf when he spoke. The chill from the snowfall was getting to him, one minute at a time. Still, Keito had been on-guard about Eichi’s health since he was sat down and told how sickly his friend’s body was since birth. He’d yet to notice a cough or sneeze. A good enough sign Eichi wasn’t worsening his health the longer he stayed outside, intent on building something so worthless.  
  
Eichi crept forward, keeping distance between them as if expecting another snowball. Examining Keito’s work, excitement broke out onto his face. “It looks good! Surprising, considering who made it. Who taught you how to make a snowman?”  
  
He ignored the underlying insult altogether. “My brother. We used to make them a lot when I was younger.”  
  
“You’re already young, though?”  
  
“When I was young enough to think playing in the snow was fun to do.” The _idiot_  tacked on at the end went unsaid.  
  
“You really want to seem mature. That kind of attitude makes you all the more childish,” Eichi mused. He then dodged the second snowball Keito threw, now aimed at his face. “It’s rude to throw things!”  
  
Irritation sparked in his tone. “Do you want to finish this snowman or not?”  
  
“I do, I do. But I want to do the upper body myself.”  
  
“No. You’re bad at it.” The former sad lump of snow was evidence that Eichi had no clue what he was doing.  
  
“I’m _not_.” Snatching the shovel out of the bucket, Eichi turned his back to him and shoveled in fresh snow. “I said I was studying you. I know what to do now. It’ll be perfect.”  
  
Studying someone for five minutes wasn’t enough to have a technique down pat. Still, Eichi was adamant about his ability to succeed, and truth be told Keito wasn’t in the mood to care. Hot chocolate was calling his name.  
  
All the same, Keito _hmph_ ed like any other inconvenienced boy and made himself home on the ground. “Incorrigible… You’re going to mess it up. If you do, I won't fix it for you.”  
  
“I bet you don’t know what incorrigible means. And I don’t need you to do it, because mine is going to be much better.” The bucket was now filled to the brim with snow again. Eichi turned his attention to a spot nearby to start. “Now stop talking before I lose concentration. It’ll be your fault.”  
  
His fault. Right. As if they weren’t out in the cold to begin with because of Eichi’s ideas.  
  
Keito huddled up to his knees and waited for Eichi’s lack of knowledge to send him asking for help. Watching Keito make the base wasn’t enough to duplicate the same; one needed to spend time on learning a new skill. It was Eichi’s weird rich-person brain making him think everything would work out his way, Keito decided. Those beliefs would catch up to him someday--today, even, if Keito had his way.  
  
So he sat there, stewing in his thoughts until Eichi admitted defeat.  
  
Two minutes passed.  
  
Eichi was running on determination. He’d have to stop sometime.  
  
More minutes passed.  
  
The upper body of the snowman packed tightly into its new ball form. It was still too tiny and malformed to call a success. Eichi’s expression was intense as he grabbed a handful of snow and patted it into place to improve its shape.  
  
Once the second set of five minutes passed, Keito grew tired of anticipating a cry for assistance. Now he was completely bored. Somehow, the snowman was coming along well under Eichi’s hand. While not perfect, it had enough solid mass that falling apart was unlikely.  
  
Keito broke the silence, knowing when to call it quits. “How did you get better so fast?”  
  
As though he didn’t hear him, Eichi continued on with his assigned task. His focus hadn’t wavered the slightest.  
  
“Eichi,” he tried again. “Eichi!”  
  
The working hands paused. Then, accompanied by a long groan: “You broke my concentration! I’m almost done!”  
  
“It’s good enough already,” he grumbled, rising to his feet, “and you weren’t answering me.”  
  
“I didn’t know you needed to hear my voice 24/7, Keito.”  
  
“Sometimes I wish I didn’t hear you at all.”  
  
“You're mean. You can’t say that to people. I’ll tell your mother.”  
  
“And I’ll tell your parents you made me come out in such bad weather to build a snowman.” Eichi fell silent, refusing to comment, and Keito broke out into a victorious smile. Sometimes winning stupid banter was a win in itself.  
  
Eichi’s handiwork had improved, almost as if he were a different person. Straining, Keito raised the upper half of the snowman up with caution. It was easy to lift and sat on top of the larger portion without trouble. Keito held slight fear the torso would roll off, forcing Eichi to consider restarting. When it stayed in place under their strict watch, it was clear they were good to go.  
  
“I still don’t understand how you learned so fast,” Keito muttered when Eichi shot him a smug smile. “Your last one was hideous. Unless you were pretending…”  
  
“I wasn’t acting. I told you! I was studying you. Now let’s finish this up, shall we?”  
  
That was the best thing Eichi had said all day.  
  
Together, they finished up the snowman’s head. The two of them working in tandem took a less amount of time. The head was perfect, round and solid. Despite having to complete the snowman at the behest of his friend, satisfaction shot through Keito as they lifted the head to complete the body.  
  
He stepped back, giving the snowman a full glance and taking it in. It did feel nice to see the outcome of their work for the past half hour. The snowman was a few inches shorter than them, three varying balls on top of each other. If there was one flaw, it was the lack of features. Yet if he knew Eichi well enough…  
  
As the thought popped into his mind, Eichi wandered to the front of the snowman, the shovel in hand. He narrowed his eyes at the smooth surface of the snowman's head. Without warning, he punctured the surface with the handle, burying the shovel inches deep.  
  
“Is that….” Keito stared at it for a while, attempting to form a good response. “... its nose?”  
  
Eichi sounded cheerful. “Yep. I checked beforehand and you didn’t have any carrots. So the shovel is going to work as its nose. Smart, right?”  
  
“It doesn’t need a nose. Snowmen don’t need air.”  
  
“You need a better imagination. Besides, it looks better with one.” Shrugging, Eichi pointed over to the line of trees they had rested underneath. “We need rocks and sticks now. Get to work, Keito!”  
  
Why was he the one who had to grab them…  
  
Grumbling under his breath at the unfairness, Keito still complied to the request. Inches of snow piled onto the ground, forcing Keito to dig around longer than he liked. Luckily, finding stray rocks and old, thin branches long fallen off the trees was easy.  
  
Uninterested in continuing any longer, Keito passed them along, allowing Eichi the honor of creating its face. Two stones for its eyes and three pebbles for the buttons. Same as the shovel, Eichi thrust the skinny branches into the sides as if stabbing needles into a pincushion.  
  
Finished, Eichi gave the snowman a breadth of space to overlook the new additions. “It’s perfect!”  
  
The completed snowman was _something_ , Keito agreed.  
  
“We did great, Keito. Aren’t you proud?”  
  
“I’m cold.”  
  
“But aren’t you _proud_?”  
  
“Aren't we finished? Can I leave?”  
  
Eichi sighed. “You’re such a bore. Fine, then. Go inside, you boring person.”  
  
Gladly.  
  
Keito left him and the snowman behind. He didn’t turn around once, eager to forget the past hour and how much trouble he’d be in once his parents returned. The whole ‘but Eichi was going to do it regardless!’ defense could only work so many times. It was beginning to lose its luster.  
  
As he slid the door open, the temple’s inner warmth blew against his face. Relaxing at the sensation of heat, Keito’s mind whirled, considering options to replace his too-old excuse.  
  
Eichi calling his name ruined his process. Eyebrow twitching, Keito glared over his shoulder to the bundled-up form waving his arm in a ‘come here’ gesture.  
  
“I just remembered!” Eichi said. “Our snowman doesn’t have a scarf! All snowmen should have scarves. So since you’re going inside, give me yours--”  
  
The door slammed shut before Eichi even finished.  
  
❄  
  
Three days later, the doorbell rang.  
  
Keito was closest to the door. His brother was upstairs, blasting music loud enough to shake the walls. His parents were at work deeper inside the temple. The task of answering their visitor fell to him.  
  
When the door opened, allowing a blast of cold air to blow inside, Eichi was sniffling on his doorstep. His face was a bright red from under his new scarlet scarf. No one else was around--what, did his driver ditch him? The Tenshouins should hire better help.  
  
Unresponsive to the sight in front of him, he was awarded with a teary-eyed glare.  
  
At the angered look, Keito shook his head and sighed. “I told you you’d get sick.”  
  
All because Eichi was so fussy about building a snowman... He would have refused him on the spot if he knew it’d result in dealing with a sneezing, shivering wreck on the weekend.  
  
“It’s rude to make fun of the ill,” Eichi reprimanded sullenly.  
  
“And here I thought idiots couldn’t catch colds.” Before Eichi whined more and forced Keito to close the door in his face, he weighed the pros and cons. The door slid open as he sighed. “Get in before you get even worse.”  
  
A second later, Eichi rushed past him with the speed of a rampaging horse.  
  
Closing the door, he spotted the fruit of their labor out near the edge of trees surrounding the temple. The past three days of chilly weather kept it from melting into a sad clump of rocks, twigs, and water. Eichi's old gray scarf wrapped around its neck, waving in the wind. It stood quite proudly, as if it had leeched away Eichi’s confidence. He hoped the dumb snowman was happy--once his parents had returned, he’d been in for quite a lecture. He wouldn’t be forgetting _that_  any time soon.  
  
“Keito, close the door!” Shivering like a mouse, Eichi scowled at him. His blond hair was a mess upon ridding himself of his hat, sticking up at odd angles. His fingers worked at tugging his jacket off. “Make me some tea, too. I need to warm up. You’re a good host, aren’t you? Don’t keep me waiting.”  
  
Keito should have left him to freeze outside.  
  
Shutting the door with a click, he trekked to the kitchen to fill the kettle with water and search for tea leaves. The _good_  tea leaves, not the bad ones, according to Eichi’s taste. It all tasted like tea to his oh-so uncultured palate.  
  
As the water rose to a boil, he set the tea cups out on the kitchen table. One in front of an empty seat he took as his own. The other where Eichi pressed his face against the wood surface as though it were his pillow. He resembled a true epitome of regret, sick and miserable.  
  
Flooded with disgusting liquids of many sorts, Eichi delivered a moist cough into his fist and uttered, “Thank you, Keito.”  
  
“Don’t thank me until you get better,” he scolded. “Which, knowing you, you’ll keep yourself sick just to spite me.”  
  
“Mmm... Well, true. But it’s the thought that counts.”  
  
… He _really_  should have left him on the doorstep.  
  
The things he did to make Eichi happy.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a really fun prompt to write!! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I liked making Keito and Eichi snark at each other like 5 year olds. 💖💖
> 
> I hope you have a good Valentine's!!


End file.
